The bottom line is article marketing has never been more effective. A lot of the people who are promoting these myths just don't want to put in the small amount of work (yes there is a bit of work involved) necessary to excel in and get all of the benefits of article marketing. And believe me, the benefits are many. They include – but are not limited to:

● increased traffic

● more subscribers, and

● higher sales of your products and services.

That being said, let's lay everything out on the table and debunk the myths that others are saying to prevent you from getting all of these benefits.

Myth #1: It doesn't work anymore.

The Truth: Article marketing does work. But you have to work a bit, too. Learn about your audience and give them quality articles. That's really all there is to it. The people who say it doesn't work are the ones who've spewed out endless amounts of poorly written articles with little or no value in them for their audience. If you do the exact opposite, your articles will be popular, they will be published and people will visit your Web site for more information.

Myth #2: No one's publishing articles anymore.

The Truth: Some ezine publishers have shied away from publishing other people's work – with “some” being the operable word here. Fact is, there are still ezine publishers who both want and need good content. You do have to work to develop good relationships, though. I suggest that in addition to distributing your articles to article directories that you also send them to a core group of the most influential ezine publishers in your industry.

Don't send them an article at first. Just soften the ground by introducing yourself and inviting them to see the articles on your Web site. Or suggest they Google the title of one of your previously published articles. That way, they'll see the quality in your articles without feeling like you're just another one of the page rank fanatics who only want to shovel out keyword-rich articles instead of content-rich articles. Yes, there is a huge difference, see Myth #5 for more information on that one.

Myth #3: The page ranking fanatics have ruined everything.

The Truth: Granted page rank fanatics – the people who pay $10 per article for a ghostwriter to churn out keyword-rich articles – have made it a bit more challenging for us content-rich article creators. Not to worry, there is a solution to all of this. Write creative articles. The bottom line is these types of marketers have actually raised the bar of those of us who are focused on quality. We just have to be even better at giving our audience the content they're hungry for – without giving away our most valuable information. After all, we have to save something for our fee-based information products.

Myth #4: It's too hard to write a good article myself.

The Truth: No, it's not too hard. In fact, it's rather easy when you have a system. I know, you're thinking that since I'm a professional writer that of course it's easy for me. Actually, I still have to follow article templates sometimes when I write. And the way I became such a pro was simply by following a system. Another thing, although I am paid considerable sums to write articles – they're travel articles. That's a far cry from the content-rich article industry. Bottom line: Professional writer or not, anyone with a decent command of the English language can write clever content-rich articles. The key is to stay firmly focused on the needs of your target audience. Bottom line: If you can give a colleague advice on a problem he's having in your profession, then you can write a content-rich article.

Myth #5: It's impossible to write a quality article that's also rich in keywords.

The Truth: It's important to have a certain amount of keywords in your articles. After all, that's also a very important of getting your article published on the Internet. I usually just write my articles without a care in the world about keywords. I focus on my target audience and nothing else when I'm writing. And my articles do very well in terms of page views on article directories such as http://www.ezinearticles.com. I also get several incoming links to my site from the articles being published throughout the Internet.

Final thought: There's no need to shy away from using article marketing to get more traffic to your Web site. In fact, it's one of the least expensive, but most effective ways to create a flurry of activity and traffic for your site.